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It’s Computational Thinking! Bebras Tasks in the Curriculum

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Informatics in Schools: Improvement of Informatics Knowledge and Perception (ISSEP 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9973))

Abstract

Bebras is an award-winning, international contest and challenge in informatics that has been running for 12 years in primary and secondary schools, with 50 countries now participating. From a single contest-focused annual event the Bebras developed to a multifunctional challenge; an activities-based educational community-building network has grown up where the development of Bebras tasks has taken a very significant role. Bebras tasks present a motivating way to introduce computer science concepts to students as well as developing computational thinking skills. Tasks are categorized in terms of the concepts being covered, and each task includes an explanation of how the task relates to informatics. In this paper we propose that Bebras tasks can be used within the school curriculum (whether it is called informatics, computer science, computing or information technology) to promote computational thinking and provide teaching materials. We give examples of Bebras tasks that could be incorporated into the curriculum, and make recommendations for schools wishing to develop children’s computational thinking skills.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all members of the international Bebras community who took part in task development and in this way influenced the outcomes of this paper. In addition, we are grateful to Chris Roffey for the development of the UK Bebras Answer Booklet 2015 from which we have taken some ideas for explanation of the example tasks in this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Akademijos Street 4, 08663, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Valentina Dagienė

  2. Department of Education and Professional Studies, King’s College London, 150 Stamford Street, London, SE1 9NH, UK

    Sue Sentance

Authors
  1. Valentina Dagienė
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  2. Sue Sentance
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sue Sentance .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ljubljana , Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Andrej Brodnik

  2. University Paris-Saclay , Cachan, France

    Françoise Tort

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Dagienė, V., Sentance, S. (2016). It’s Computational Thinking! Bebras Tasks in the Curriculum. In: Brodnik, A., Tort, F. (eds) Informatics in Schools: Improvement of Informatics Knowledge and Perception. ISSEP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9973. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46747-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46747-4_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46746-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46747-4

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